You know how with that question the answer is something like “neither” or “both” – in any case it’s not necessarily one before the other? (Kind of like the chicken and the egg question I suppose.) Well what if depression is like that? There’s the abuse of the self as the act, you might say, and the feelings and everything that come along with depression as the excuse. Or you might say the giving into the lie as the act and the feeling of worthlessness as the excuse. Or maybe the psychology as the act and the physiology as the excuse. Anyway, if the act and the excuse are together, really, or if it can go in either direction, then surely so can depression. That would mean that you can experience the physiology part “first” and the lie part “second”. Hmm. Think I’ll just paste all my notes here. Enjoy!
Full Notes:
Friday, Oct 16, 2020
What direction does it go? (Lie first or physiological stuff first?) What if the answer is, I don’t know? Still, of course, the lie is always present, and that’s important. But that leaves the possibility that addressing stuff physiologically can help, as well as psychologically. What if that’s the case? Basically what if the direction could be either way or both? Hmm!
Saturday, Oct 17, 2020
Psychology can’t have morals. It can’t think of anything as right or wrong. It can only consider that a delusion. Philosophically it can’t. How does that work? It’s like you can either have the “scriptural” point of view or the secular…
Sunday
How does Christ make us not worthless? Wouldn’t we have intrinsic value just the same? Without the plan of salvation, I guess? Do I have the lie wrong, that we’re worthless? Maybe that we’ll never amount to anything, or something??
What if the light of Christ is no more or less than the fact that all truth permeates us all the time, and everything that’s true is encompassed in the light of Christ? Or something like that?
Friday, October 23, 2020
Referring to the above question of which direction it goes, is that related to the question of which direction it goes between doing the wrong thing and justifying it with how you make yourself see things? Because I don’t know which direction that goes, either. Seems like it can happen both directions or even both at once.
If it is related, it would suggest that the physiological stuff is a justification for the thought patterns. Is it the case that sometimes the justification comes first – the thoughts – and the misdeed comes later? Seems like one of those things that can happen all at once or not.
Alright, so I don’t know, I’m going to write here a bit and see where it goes. So in the Book of Mormon, for example, if you were to track what happens first, the sin or the different way of seeing things…isn’t pride a name for a different way of seeing things? And it’s a sin in itself. You don’t have to steal anything or withhold anything or whatever to have pride, right? You just have the pride and there it is. You’re sinning. Maybe in ignorance, but you’re sinning. And pride has many faces. Looking up and looking down, for example. Or thinking you’re better or thinking you’re worse. In the Book of Mormon it seems like it’s usually thinking you’re better. You’re “lifted up.” “Lofty.” “Puffed up.” But would I be correct to say that sometimes these days and surely in all times people are more down than up? What am I? I know I’m lifted up in some ways, but I’d say I compare myself negatively to others. That seems the normal thing. At least from my point of view. Seems pretty normal to do both. Why don’t we see that in the Book of Mormon? Am I missing something? Heck, why don’t the scriptures describe mental illness? I swear they don’t. They just don’t. Am I missing something? Just seems like from a scriptural point of view you are sinning. What do I mean here? The scriptures just don’t seem very compassionate, in a way. We know since we have spiritual knowledge that God is our Heavenly Father and he loves us each dearly and everything. But to read the scriptures you’d come away thinking God is mean. Like you don’t get that from there. Am I being blasphemous? I’m just honestly saying what it seems. Like I know that my Heavenly Father loves me, and I know that through spiritual knowledge, and I think we can all feel that to an extent, and we can know that more as we knock, etc. But even in scriptural accounts – let’s take Nephi of 3rd Nephi, the apostle of the Lord, for example – surely the Lord loved him and surely Nephi knew that and felt that. But the scriptural account doesn’t go into that. Nephi is told by the Lord to come forth, to bring the records, to add something to them, he’s given the power to baptize, etc. And Nephi kisses the Lord’s feet, so you know Nephi loves the Lord. But we don’t have an account of how Nephi knows he’s special to the Lord. Know what I mean?
What does this have to do with psychology and everything – I don’t know. I don’t like these paragraphs so much. I know I’m just thinking in them, trying to get there. So I’ll continue. The scriptures don’t have a thing to say about mental illness. Which seems strange, on one hand. They don’t. Well of course they do – you stay faithful to the Lord during all kinds of difficulties and people have trials of captivity and things like that. But really – nobody in the scriptures has a mental illness. Well a lot of people are possessed with devils. But we don’t have devils in our days. We know better than that. What was Jesus thinking? So harsh, was he. Calling people possessed when all they had was a simple mental illness. That’s terrible. We know there are no spirits in our days. That’s ignorant. Can you believe how ignorant they were back then when they thought that people who were sick or mentally ill were actually possessed with devils! That’s laughable! It’s just tragic, really. All those poor people all those years who were thought to have a devil. Well thank goodness for today when we know it’s just a chemical imbalance! Thank goodness for our enlightened age!
Those poor, deluded people back then who believed in spirits! And God. Religion has been such a shackle for so many people! O that we could burn the scriptures forever and free people from this terrible thinking that binds them down!
It’s no wonder many psychologists consider all religion to be a delusion. It’s a wonder they don’t all, if they’re true psychologists! I’m telling you – psychology can’t believe in that stuff. It can’t believe in a right and a wrong, and God and everything that comes with it. That flies in the face of good psychology! To say there’s a right and a wrong just feeds the delusions of guilt that we are working so hard to get people to abandon. I know I have delusions of guilt. More than are true. False guilt. And it does me bad. Does me harm.
How do you reconcile this? Philosophically? There’s definitely a war here, an inconsistency if you look at it a certain way. Of course I know God exists, and I know it for certain. So there you go. But I also know there’s false guilt. There’s true guilt, and there’s false guilt. Psychology just wants the easy way out – it wants to say it’s all false. [Religion wants to say it’s all true] Well it’s not. Instead of practicing love and charity and righteous judgment, psychology wants to remove any grounds for condemnation so that there isn’t any. And that’s why I say we have to be as kind as we can about it, and loving, and forbear from judgment, or judge righteously. Because I don’t throw away sin. I keep sin and righteousness. I know it’s true. I don’t just think it, I know it. I have a testimony. I’ve been given knowledge and intelligence through the Holy Spirit many times, and I can’t deny it. It’s a knowledge and intelligence that sticks with you. O that all could have this testimony. It would change so much!
But even with it a person is subject to these things, and they can be hard to figure out. Hard. Hard for me, at least. I think hard for about everybody. If somebody has figured out this stuff with mental illness where are they and why don’t they speak up? Seriously, how can nobody know what causes depression or anxiety? Have we asked?? Have we searched, and knocked? And for how long? Maybe I think it’s easier than it is. Maybe I’m emboldened by my investigation into gravity as acceleration and this is really a bigger thing. But I tell you I still think it’s attainable. Everything important has been hard, as far as discoveries go, no? We have come a long way, I think. I feel it’s attainable.
Another good reason to burn the scriptures is because I don’t like them. They’re so condemning. The world would be a better place without them. They offend me. Can’t they just go away? Thankfully most people don’t pay them any attention. But I wish they could be obliterated. They bug me, just existing.
They’re not true, people! They’re stories written by authors. They’re myths, dreamed up by somebody. Literature. Literature, I tell you!
Alright, enough with annoying man.
So I still don’t know about the direction thing. Whether between physiology and psychology or between the act that needs justifying and the justification that justifies the act. The latter sounds like a philosophical question to me. Surely they can’t be separated cleanly like that. I’ve kind of tried. And it’s never worked. It’s a tidy thought, but you can’t stuff reality into it. You cant stuff reality into that tidy model. Terry Warner was right when he said it happened at the same time, that it’s all one thing. But it’s so helpful to begin explaining it like there’s an act and there’s the justification. And maybe you do start explaining it that way. And then go down that road and see that you can’t stuff reality into that tidy model. And then somehow explain that we see that it must be messier than that. The line between them must be blurred. I need a way to explain better why that’s the case. I’m not sure why.
The direction between psychology and physiology is likewise hard for me to figure out. I’m not sure if it’s the same thing or not, as the act/justification thing. But it makes much more sense to describe the psychology as the cause and the physiology as the result. I don’t even know what I’m talking about here. I think I’ll stop for now.
Saturday, Oct 31 2020
So psychology says there’s no sin, and the scriptures say there is, and they don’t talk about fake guilt and anxiety and depression, that I can see, or the flip side of being “lifted up”. They just talk about being lifted up, being puffed up, being lofty. What is this?? Am I thinking about this right? There’s something here that’s useful, I’m just not sure I’m thinking about it right. I tell you I don’t find anything about depression and anxiety in the scriptures. I may be dense or something, and I know they talk all about “afflictions of every kind” and captivity of different sorts and trials and sicknesses and infirmities. And so the principles of course apply to mental illness in that way. I believe that. I think that’s true. And they talk about people being possessed with devils and having other infirmities and I kind of think that might be what it is. But I find no mention of anybody in the scriptures who specifically has depression or anxiety – like I said, unless I’m missing something. Or unless being possessed with a devil includes that. Were times different? Surely somebody had that problem in olden times! Just not enough people? Teach the rule, not the exception, it’s been said. Well there seem to be enough people these days that struggle with depression and anxiety that it’s a bit of a rule by now, no?
There seem to be enough people that struggle with it that there is need of teaching to that audience, specifically. I would say to those people, I think, that while they may do wrong, and sin truly, that is by all chances unrelated to their struggles with depression and anxiety. But I wouldn’t say it’s a chemical imbalance that nobody understands until more research is done. I wouldn’t say that, because we don’t know that – it’s just a theory, and a bad one in my opinion. Correlation is not necessarily causation. But I would say…what would I say? I’d say maybe there’s an alternate theory, there’s a way to understand these things if one is willing to put in the effort to understand it, that may be helpful to some. And that is what we’re working on. Basically depression is the product of, or at least always involves, a lie, namely that we are kind of worthless. Dang, I don’t know exactly what I’d say here, and I need to know. Basically I’d say you’re not suffering because you’re guilty, in all likelihood in your individual case (and don’t think you’re the exception), and we have to treat depression and anxiety like we would any other affliction that we have to bear up under and just do our best with, like a physical ailment, or like same-sex attraction, or anything like that. You do what you can about it, but realize that it might be with you for the long haul and don’t think you are going to obliterate it completely. Maybe some can, and more power to them. But not all people. That’s the main thing I’d say to people who struggle with mental illness.
As far as my theory goes, I’d say its role is in helping people do what they can to understand themselves and find relief in a measure. Surely a correct understanding of these things can guide science, as it were, in its research, etc. You come up with a scientific model, or theory in other words, and then you do the more mundane scientific work of confirming the theory and applying it to stuff. Then when you find inconsistencies somebody starts it all over with a new theory or model.
But it’s not just for scientists/psychologists, it’s for the common man. The one who’s struggling with this stuff, man or woman or child, of course. Realize that there is a lie that is part of depression, if that’s what you’re struggling with, and that lie is that you’re worthless. That’s false, of course – you have a loving Heavenly Father to whom you mean everything. At least realize that. Then if you want let’s talk about some of the implications of that lie – you are not worth taking care of, your opinions don’t matter, you don’t deserve to have fun or have enjoyment or be happy, you don’t have time to do things for yourself, if you do you’re stealing and you should feel guilty – stuff like that. …